Crime and Deviance - Globalisation, Green Crime, Human Rights and State Crime Flashcards

1
Q

Define globalisation.

A

Held et al (1999): ’the widening, deepening and speeding up of world wide interconnectedness in all aspects of life, from the cultural to the criminal, the financial to the spiritual’.

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2
Q

Give 4 causes of globalisation.

A
  • New communication and transport technologies
  • Collective action problems
  • Globalised media
  • Global trade
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3
Q

Castells (1998) and the worth of the global criminal economy:

A

The global criminal economy is worth over £1tn per year.

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4
Q

Give 4 facts about sex tourism

A

Sex tourism is the practice of foreign, often Western, tourists travelling to developing countries to engage in sexual activities in exchange for money
- One of the most common location is Thailand, where it makes $6.4bn a year
- 250,000 people engage yearly, 90% being men
- It often goes hand-in-hand with sex trafficking, with UNICEF estimating 2mn children are exploited annualy, with a total of 4.8mn people trapped worldwide

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5
Q

Give 4 facts about international terrorism

A

International terrorism is the use of violence and fear to force governments to comply with certain policy demands
- Since 1970, there has been over 200,000 terrorist incidents
- It has multiple theorised causes: greater awareness of economic disparities between countries, resentment of Wester foreign policy and its effects, etc.
- As the world becomes more connected, cyber terrorism is becoming an increasing problem, such as with the 2013/4 Yahoo data breach

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6
Q

Give 4 facts about the international drug trade

A

The international drug trade inolves the production, transportation, distribution and sale of illegal narcotics
- It is worth up to $500bn annually and is responsible for 1-2% of the GWP
- Some countries rely on the drug trade economically, 20% of the Colombian population working in cocaine production
- Mephamphetamines make up anywhere from 25-50% of trafficked drugs

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7
Q

What are the supply and demand sides of the global criminal economy?

A

The demand side is often developed, liberal countries that have laws against the behaviours that people seek, like drug abuse or secual child abuse.
The demand side is often developing countries that lack the regulation, police control, or liberal legislation to stop them, with the illegal economy as a preferable alternative to poverty with high profit margins and low costs

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8
Q

Outline cocaine production in Colombia.

A

20% of Colombians work in the production of cocaine, promoted by the loss of funds for local paramilitary groups after the Cold War.

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9
Q

Beck (1992) and risk society:

A

Globalisation has increased the fear of risk in late modern society, as well as people’s feelings of disagency due to the sheer size of global problems like terrorism or global warming, creating ‘global risk consciousness’. This causes governments to respond with harsher social control, over things like borders or cultural diversity with assimilationist policies, especially after 9/11.

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10
Q

How does the media affect ‘global risk consciousness’?

A

The media exacerbates fear as it creates moral panics (Cohen (1972)) about certain threats to capitalise on engagements; for example, 1/3 of coverage on migrants presented them as a threat to the UK.

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11
Q

Taylor (1997) and the two new opportunities for crime:

A

Globalisation has created crime on both ends of the spectrum:
- MNCs are able to move their corporations to lower-regulation countries, thus increasing unemployment, with governments largely unable to intervene due to the Washington Consensus - this leads to high levels of relative deprivation that lead to w/c crime
- Deregulation of global markets is ripe for elite exploitation, through insider trading, tax avoidance, fraudulent claims of subsidies from IGOs, etc.

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12
Q

Give a criticism of Taylor (1997) and the two new opportunities for crime.

A

Globalisation may also make getting away with crime more difficult, 116 countries have extradition treaties with the US and things like European Arrest Warrants have been used in the EU to crack down on terrorism, such as with the Berlin Market bombers.

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13
Q

Roth and Friedrichs (2015) and ‘crimes of globalisation’:

A

Economic IGOs like the IMF and the WTO are dominated by capitalist countries (such as the US having a veto in the IMF) and impose neoliberal ‘structural adjustment programmes’ via conditional loans, thus allowing Western corporations to expand into developing countries but often causing crime due to exploitation.

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14
Q

Cain (2010) and the ‘global state’:

A

The IMF and the World Bank act as a ‘global state’, not doing anything illegal themselves but causing widespread harm through things like imposing austerity measures.

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15
Q

Give a criticism of Roth and Friedrichs (2015) and ‘crimes of globalisation’

A

Neoliberal economic policy has helped many developing countries escape poverty, Vietnam’s Doi Moi reforms in the 80’s opened it up to foreign direct investment and global trade, as well as trade agreements like CPTPP - unemployment 1/3 1997 levels in 2011 and 9th lowest prison population in Asia. However, it has still seen crime rise, the prison population increasing by 66%.

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16
Q

Hobbs and Dunningham and criminal organisations:

A

The way organised crime is organised is different in a globalised world, increasingly it is composed of loose-knit networks of individuals seeking opportunities, connected by individuals with global contacts that act as ‘hubs’; they contrast this with the large-scale, hierarchical ‘Mafia’-style criminal organisations of the past.

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17
Q

How is crime ‘glocal’?

A

Hobbs and Dunningham argue that criminal organisations are largely rooted in their local context, with global connections, meaninsg that the actual crime will vary from place to place but be influenced by global conditions like demand for drugs.

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18
Q

Glenny (2008) and the new oligarchs:

A

After the fall of the Soviet Union, wealthy individuals were able to use their funds to buy up cheap goods from recently deregulated Soviet markets and sell them for huge profits overseas; however, the collapse also meant high levels of disorder that the new ‘oligarchs’ wished to protect their wealth from.

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19
Q

Glenny (2008) and ‘McMafia’:

A

The new oligarchs turned to the rising ‘mafias’ made up of ex-KGB and convicts; however, these new organisations were different to past mafias, that had ethnic and family ties, as well as clear hierarchies. These groups were purely economic, functioning more like businesses than traditional criminal organisation; for example, the ruthless Chechen mafia soon ‘franchised’ it operations, selling the name to local protection rackets.

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20
Q

What is the significane of the ‘McMafia’?

A

Glenny (2008) shows how globalisation can create new ruling classes, new criminal organisations and how the two can help perpetuate and increase one another’s power, such as by increasing the connections of the organisations or protecting the ruling class.

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21
Q

Beck (1992) and the environment:

A

In toady’s late modernity, we (at least the developed world) have the resources to provide for all; however, the technologies and their price have created new ‘manufactured risks’ like global warming - these risks are not localised, leading to a ‘global risk society’.

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22
Q

Show how global warming in one placecan create danger in another.

A

Wildfires in Russia that destroyed parts of the country’s grain belt led the Kremlin to introduce export bans on grain, thus pushing up the price globally - a 30% rise in the price of bread in Mozambique (who are heavily dependent of food imports) led to riots and looting that killed at least a dozen, all whilst price speculators were “gabling on hunger in the financial markets” (Patel (2010))

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23
Q

What is traditional criminology’s perspective on green crime? What is the problem?

A

Concerned only with the violate of criminal law, they focus purely on actions that break national and international environmental statutes - Situ and Emmons (2000) defining environmental crime as ‘an unauthorised act or omission that violates the law’. This is helpful in its simplicity; however, it ignores the power that groups that commit these crimes have in shaping the legislation.

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24
Q

What is green criminology?

A

A form of criminology that looks at green crime from the perspective of harm, rather than the violation of law - Rob White (2008) argues that the proper subject of criminology is any action that harms the physical environment and/or the human and non-human animals within it, even if no law has been broken.

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25
What are the benefist of green criminology?
- Many of the worst harms to the environment are not illegal at all - companies globally emitted over 35Gt of CO2, entirely legally - Many countries have different laws relating to the environment, so can't provide a consistent standard of harm
26
What is green criminology a form of?
'Zemiology' or the study of harm, rather than crime - it is also 'transgressive' as it looks past the boundaries of traditional criminology
27
White (2008) and the two views of harm:
- States and MNCs take an 'anthropocentric' view of environmental harm, which assumes human right over nature and puts economic growth over the environment - The alternative is 'ecocentric', which sees humans and the environment as interdependent, so harm to the environment is harm to humans (largely the view taken by green criminology).
28
South (2014) and the 2 types of green crime:
There are two types of green crime: Primary green crimes are crimes that are themselves hurting the environment with four main types: - Air Pollution - Deforestation - Species decline and animal abuse - Water pollution Secondary green crimes are the crimes that the primary leads to, two examples are: - State violence - Organised crime
29
What are crimes of air pollution (South (2014)):
The burning of fossil fules adds 6bn tones of carbon to the atmosphere yearly, contributing to global warming and ill health due to increased carcinogens causing rising early-onset cancer and twice as many deaths due to breathing problems (Walters (2013)).
30
What are crimes of deforestation (South (2014)):
Between 1960 and 1990, 20% of the world's rainforests were destroyed, often to create space for prduction like rearing cattle, or during the 'war on drugs'.
31
What are crimes of species decline and animal abuse (South (2014)):
50 species a day are becoming extinct, due to deforestation of their habitats (orangitans), climate change and pollution (fish), overexploitation, or others.
32
What are crimes of water pollution (South (2014)):
Things like the BP oil spill or the dumping of sewage into water by Thames Water that harm both the habitual fauna, like the up to 5 trillion fish BP killed, and the people whose water Thames Water contaminated - 25mn die annually from this.
33
How does primary green crime lead to state violence?
States wish to use the environment for their own benefit even against their own agreed laws - this leads them to attack anyone that attempts to expose their crimes - such as French Secret Service blowing up a Greenpeace ship (killing one person) that was exposing French nuclear testing in the South Pacific.
34
Day (1991) and state violence:
"in every case where a government has committed itself to nuclear weapons or nuclear power, all those who oppose this policy are treated in some degree as enemies of the state."
35
How does primary green crime lead to organised crime?
The business of disposing of toxic waste from chemical, nuclear and other industries is wildly profitable - in Italy, 'eco-mafias' have been created that profit from illegal dumping of waste (often at sea). Additionally, Western businesses often ship their waste to be processed in the developing world, for cheap.
36
Rosoff et al (1998) and the cost of sustainability:
Companies will ship waste off to be processed based on price, the cost of legitimately disposing of toxic waste in the USA is about $2,500 a ton, but some developing countries will dispose of it for $3 a ton.
37
South (2014) and 'environmental discrimination':
South notes another type of secondary green crime: 'environmental discrimination, where poorer groups aredisproportionately affected by pollution, such as shipping waste to the developing world.
38
Give a criticism of green criminology.
There's an issue of definition. Firstly, individual sociologists have to make political and moral decisions about what is harm because they can't rely on the law, harming objectivity. Secondly, to what extent can you consider crime a response to primary green crime: if green crime does create pollution and a 'Global Risk Society' (Beck (1992)), then can all crime that comes from that fear be considered 'secondary'?
39
Green and Ward (2012) and the definition of state crime:
‘illegal or deviant activities perpetrated by, or with the complicity of, state agencies', including all crimes committed by or on behalf of the government to further policy and excludes all actions taken by members of the state for their own benefit.
40
What are the two reasons why state crime is so serious:
- The state has much more power, so their crimes are much more severe - Green and Ward (2012) found that 262mn people were murdered by governments in the 20th century - The state is the source of law so any crimes they commit undermine the system of justice and public faith in law
41
Michalowski and Kramer (2006) and state crime:
‘Great power and great crimes are inseparable. Economic and political elites can bring death, disease, and loss to tens of thousands with a single decision.’
42
McLaughlin (2012) and the four catgories of state crime:
- Political crimes, such as corruption (Cash for honours) - Crimes by security and police forces, such as genocide (Rwanda) - Economic crimes, such as violation of health and safety law (Bhopal) - Social and cultural crimes, such as institutional racism (Murder of George Floyd)
43
Outline a state-genocide:
The Rwandan Genocide ocurred due to the tensions between ethnicised social groups in Rwanda, created by colonial Belgians: the liverstock-owning Tutsis and the Hutus. After their independence, a civil war, as well as hate propaganda fueled by hard-line Hutus, increased the racial tension - hitting a flashpoint at the death of the Hutu president. In a hundred days, 800,000 Tutsis were killed; in the beginning, it was done by marauding Hutu militias, however, more civillians joined in (possibly as the violence spread to Tutsi sympathisers) with 1/3 of the Hutu population having participated by the end.
44
Kramer and Michalowski (1993) and state-corporate crime:
They distinguish between two types of state-corporate crime: - State-intiated: when the state initiates, directs, and approves corporate crime, such as the Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster - State-facilitated: when the state fails to regulate corporate behaviour, making crime easier, such as the Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig Disaster
45
How was the Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster 'state-initiated' corporate crime:
Kramer (1992) argues that risky, negligent and cost-cutting decisions by the state agency NASA and the corporation Morton Thiokol led to the explosion that killed seven astronauts.
46
How is the Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig Disaster an example of 'state-facilitated' corporate crime?
Enquiries found that, although the companies had caused the larget oil spill in history with their poor safety regulations and cost-cutting decisions, the government had failed to regulate and stop them, with regulators being under-staffed and simply accepting assurances that a blowout was unlikely.
47
What are the the two kinds of 'War crimes'?
- Illegal wars - Crimes committed during or after a war
48
How can war be illegal? Give an example.
Under a binding resolution by the chamber, war can only be legal (unless in self-defences) if it is approved by the UNSC - the US and UK's invasion of Iraq was illegal on this basis as they lacked the resolution, knew that states like China and Russia had the intention to veto.
49
Kramer and Michalowski (2005) and Iraq:
In order to present the Invasion of Iraq as legal, the US and UK knowingly made the false claim that the Iraqi government posessed WMDs, with the famous 'sexed-up dossier'.
50
Whyte (2014) and Iraq:
The US's 'neoliberal colonisation of Iraq' is another example of 'War crimes', as the constitution was illegally changed so the economy could be privatised and Iraqi oil could be seized 'for reconstruction'. Additionally, the $48bn given in 'cost-plus' contracts led to enourmous waste as we don't know what much of the money was actually spent on - this is an example of state-facilitated corporate crime.
51
Kramer and Michalowski (1993) and Abu Ghraib:
Crimes, like torture, also took place, with Abu Ghraib hosting several instances of ‘sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses’ of prisoners, according to an enquiry, with only 9 soldiers convicted and none above the rank of staff sergeant, despite the knowledge of higher ranks.
52
What are the possible ways to define state crime?
- Domestic law - Social harms - Societal reaction - International law - Human rights
53
How does Chambliss (1989) define state crime?
Chambliss (1989): ‘acts defined by law as criminal and committed by state officials in pursuit of their jobs as representatives of the state’.
54
What is the issue with defining state crime based on domestic law?
States are the ones who decide domestic law, especially problematic in a place like the UK where the constitution is uncodified so can be changed very easily - an example would be the Supreme Court finding that Sunak's Rwanda Scheme was illegal and against human rights law, so Sunak creating the Immigration (Safety of Rwanda) Bill to circumvent them.
55
How does Michalowski (1985) define state crime?
Focussing more on zemiology, state crime isn't just illegal acts, but also ‘legally permissible acts whose consequences are similar to those of illegal acts’ in the harm they cause.
56
Hillyard et al (2004) and zemiology:
They argue that criminology should be replaced by 'zemiology', the study of harm.
57
What is the benefit of zemiology hen looking at state crime? What are the weaknesses?
+ Prevents states from legalising their own actions + Creates a single standard that can be apploed to different states - What level of harm must occur to be classified as a crime? - Who decides what harm is? This just replaces the state’s arbitrary definition of crime with the sociologist’s equally arbitrary definition of harm. - Harm is nuanced and personal, is the state comitting 'harm' by restricting transgender women's access to public bathrooms in an effort to protect cis women's safety?
58
How does labelling theory approach state crime? What is the benefit?
Whether any act is a 'crime' is based on whether the social audience labels it that way - this recognises that state crime is a constructed concept that varies between groups, and avoids the researcher imposing their own definition that disagree with the actual participants.
59
What are the issues with the labelling theory perspective on state crime?
- 'societal reaction' is even vaguer than harm; Kauzlarich (2007) found that anti-Iraq War protesters saw it as harmful, but were unwilling to call it criminal, despite the fact that from a harm and international law prespective, it is. - Who gets to decide? What happens when people disagree? True for something like Vietnam - Audiences' definitions are guided by information brought by the state and ruling class
60
Rothe and Mullins (2008) and international law:
They define state-crime as any action by or on the behalf of the state that violates international or domestic law.
61
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using international law to define state-crime?
+ Uses globally agreed definitions of state-crime + Designed specifically for state crime - States can leave international law - is North Korea developing nuclear weapons legal cause they left NPT before they did it? - States are able to influence international law - Strand and Tuman (2012): Japan has attempted to otherthrow whaling bans by bribing 'microstates' to vote against it
62
Schwendinger and Schwendinger (1975) and human rights:
We should define state-crime as the violation of people's basic human rights by the state or its agents.
63
What are the advantages of using human rights to define state-crime?
The Schwendingers argue that criminologists that study state-crime need to be transgressive, as going purely on domestic law would make us subservient to the state's interests - they argue that the role of sociologists is to defend human rights.
64
What are the disadvantages of using human rights to define state-crime?
- Not every state has the same human rights law - Cohen (2001): it's not extensive, it includes clear violations like toture, but ignores crimes like corruption - What counts as a human right? Green and Ward (2012) argue that liberty is a human right, but what if states fail to provide adequate food security to exercise it?
65
Adorno et al (1950) and the authoritarian personality:
People are more likely to obey orders because they have been socialised into having an 'authoritarian personality' that tends them towards obedience to authorities - attributes of this personality include black-and-white ideas of morality, rigid thinking, and aggression towards people that violate norms. Many in Nazi Germany had been socialised into this by the punitive, disciplinarian norms of society.
66
Arendt (2006) and Eichmann:
Most people view those that carry out torture and genocide to be psychopaths, but those who actually do are often relatively normal people, psychologically, with Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann not even being particularly antisemitic.
67
Give a criticism of Adorno's authoritarian personality:
Milgram's (1966) investigation of obedience found that everyone tested would administer a lethal shock (300 volts) to another person for purposes as minute as a memory test if insisted on by an authority figure, some administering shocks up to 420 volts - this would seem to imply that, unless we are in a society similar to Nazi Germany, that everyone is capable of obedience, not just those with specific personality types.
68
Green and Ward (2012) and 're-socialisation':
In order to overcome norms against the use of cruelty, individuals must be re-socialised, trained and exposed to propoganda about 'the enemy' to justify it. States also often create 'enclaves of barbarism' segregated from outer society, allowing torturers to regard it as a '9-to-5', after which they can return to normal life.
69
Kelman and Hamilton (1989) and the My Lai Massacre:
Investigating the My Lai Massacre, where American soldiers killed 400 civillians, they argue that there are three features necessary to produce obedience: - Authorisation: duty to obey then replaces normal moral principles - Routinisation: individuals can perform this in a detached manner - Dehumanisation: normal moral principles do not apply to an enemy that is perceived as sub-human
70
Bauman (1989) and the holocaust:
Contrary to many commentators, the holocaust was not a reversion from modernity, rather it was only made possible by certain key features of modernity: - Highly specialised division of labour: allowed noone in partuclar to feel responsible - Bureaucratisation: normalised the killing by making it a routine ‘job’ and meant that the victims could be dehumanised as mere ‘units’. - Instrumental rationality: the belief in maximum efficiency - Science and technology: use of modern technology like railways and industrial gas
71
Give a criticism of Bauman (1989) and the holocaust:
Although modernity may have supplied the means of the holocaust, it itself did not cause it - the hatred of non-Aryan people like Jews, Romani and Sinti, and Slavs meant that people viewed them as inferior and believed that they deserved death and were getting in the way of German dominance, an idea propogated over a decade of propoganda and events like the Kristalnacht or legislation like the Nuremberg Laws.
72
Alvarez (2010) and human rights:
There has been increasing consensus on the impostance of human rights in recent years, through the work of groups like Amnesty International, which is bringing greater pressure to states to comply.
73
Cohen (2006) and denial:
Cohen argues that democratic states' justifications for human rights absuse follow three stages: - 1: "It didn't happen", like the internment of Uighar Muslims in China - 2: "If it did happen, “it” is something else", like the US and UK claiming self-defence in Iraq - 3: "Even if it is what you say it is, it’s justified", like the 'war on terror
74
Cohen (2006) and techniques of neutralisation:
Drawing on Sykes and Matza (1957), Cohen uses the same 'techniques of neutralisation' that delinquents use to justify deviant behaviour, on states and human rights absuse: - Denial of victim - Denial of injury - Denial of responsibility - Condemning the condemners (arguing that they are only condemning due to ulterior motives) - Appeal to higher loyalty ("our actions are justified because the ends justify the means")
75
Cohen (2006) and torture:
The US uses 'techniques of neutralisation' when it had to publicly justify 'enhanced interrogation practices' like sleep deprivation and waterboarding, that Cohen call 'torture lite' - they did this by claiming that it wasn't torture because they merely induced stress and were not physically and psychologically damaging.